Drivers of host vehicles have a constantly growing amount of information to observe and process to maneuver safely while driving on the open road. Drivers must not only know about and adhere to the rules of the road in their own right, but they must also be aware of what nearby vehicles are doing. To complicate the issue, nearby vehicles do not always behave in a predictable manner.
Drivers face these challenges in addition to an ever-increasing number of distractions, including radios, ringing cell phones, passengers demanding attention, and the like. For this reason, it may be challenging to determine whether a nearby vehicle has been involved in a side-impact collision in a timely manner. As a corollary, it may be difficult for drivers to respond quickly and appropriately to a nearby side-impact collision.
Existing crash sensing systems do not identify the side-impact collision status of nearby vehicles; that is, whether a nearby vehicle has been in a side-impact, and respond accordingly with warnings to a host driver, other drivers, or countermeasures such as automatic application of brakes, tensioning of seat belts, or pre-arming of air bags.
It is therefore desirable to provide systems and methods for identifying the side-impact collision status of nearby vehicles. It is also desirable to provide systems and methods for responding to the side-impact collision status of nearby vehicles and for identifying non-drivable paths as well as available and preferred driving paths. It is desirable to provide a warning to a driver of a host vehicle, as well as to drivers of other vehicles and to infrastructure support systems. It is also desirable to automatically apply countermeasures when appropriate, especially if a driver of a host vehicle is distracted or otherwise prevented from doing so.